


in the hands

by elegantidler



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-10-10 23:31:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20536439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elegantidler/pseuds/elegantidler
Summary: Holiness is in the hands even if it’s always the headthat gets haloed.-C.T. Salazar





	1. Earth, Before

Crowley makes the first move, in so much as nudging Aziraphale’s shin can be considered a move.

_Bodies are weird, _thinks Aziraphale, _and touching even more so._

There’s pressure and warmth and something else beneath all that that Aziraphale doesn’t recognize.

Heaven isn’t like this, other angels aren’t like this.

There’s a closeness between angels, yes, but air doesn’t touch air the same way that scales touch skin.

Aziraphale spends the next 200 years trying to avoid any more touching.

* * *

It gets easier after the first time.

Once the humans have figured out how to make decent alcohol, he and Crowley while away many an evening with a few bottles in the corners of various taverns and inns.

Tonight, Crowley is looking morosely into his glass and relaying a long and winding story that is clearly upsetting him, but Aziraphale, more drunk than sober, has quite lost the thread of it.

So he does the only thing that feels natural. He reaches across the space between them and pats Crowley’s hand sympathetically.

It feels good, and Crowley doesn’t move his hand away.

It’s almost the same as the first time, the warmth, the pressure, the something else he still doesn’t understand.

Crowley’s skin feels different than his scales but Aziraphale thinks that maybe he doesn’t have to keep avoiding touch in the future.

* * *

Once he’s done it, it’s easy to do it twice, three times, and soon he’s reaching for Crowley as often as they meet and Crowley keeps reaching back.

Sometime across the years, it becomes effortless.

Walking arm in arm, a gentle elbow in a rib, hands on shoulders, an arm gripped tight in surprise, hands squeezed in sympathy, lint picked off a sleeve, a dozing head on a shoulder, sides pressed comfortably together in a corner table or a bookshop backroom.

Angels aren’t supposed to be like this, aren’t supposed to fit into these bodies of flesh and blood, aren’t supposed to find comfort in the physical. Or with a demon. 

But this body is him and he is never more himself than when he’s with Crowley.

And the more time passes the less Aziraphale can deny the thing that’s underneath it all.

So when he reaches for Crowley at the end of the world he can finally feel it for what it is.

The thing between them that took him too long to understand, is love.


	2. South Downs, After

And then the world doesn’t end.

And everything changes and everything stays the same, and they both learn how everything can be so much more.

Love is different than fondness and passion is different than comfort.

Hands that once only patted now trail along skin in adoration leaving goosebumps in their wake.

Lips once reserved for speaking now seek and press kisses on everything they find. 

Aziraphale can stand behind Crowley and wrap his arms around him and Crowley can twist to kiss his cheek.

Fingers laced together, bodies pressed together, the two of them, _together. _

Love expressed in endless forms, endless touches.

_It’s strange, _Aziraphale thinks, Crowley sleeping next to him, arm wrapped around his belly, face pressed against his chest, _how much closer and better this feels than anything in Heaven, how the physical is made more holy than God through loving another. _

Hands worship in a way that God can never understand.


End file.
